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Columbus-based Engauge Marketing has been bought by multinational advertising giant Publicis
Groupe, the latest in a wave of such acquisitions in the ad industry.

Although Publicis did not disclose financial terms of the deal, the company reportedly paid
between $60 million and $70 million for 6-year-old Engauge. In 2012, Engauge had revenue of $39
million, according to Ad Age.

Publicis, headquartered in Paris, was already one of the four biggest ad agencies in the world
in July when it merged with another top-four agency, Omnicom Group, to become the world’s largest
ad agency.

Engauge employs more than 250 people and specializes in providing advertising services in
digital and social media to such companies as Nationwide, Cisco Systems and Coca-Cola.

The acquisition of Engauge by Publicis is part of a trend in the ad industry, said Deborah
Mitchell, a professor of marketing at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business.

“It’s meant to not just capture a financial advantage but also business development,” Mitchell
said.

“Clients like a Nationwide or Wendy’s or whatever, when their marketing team gets together with
an ad agency to strategize how to get to consumers, they don’t want five different people at the
table,” she said. “But as all these digital platforms proliferated, specialists developed. Big ad
agencies realized they could lose power and no longer own their relationship with a client.

“The big agencies realized that if they acquired a specialty firm they could still have one
unified base to present to the Nationwides and Scotts of the world, and maintain their position in
the industry,” Mitchell said. “They could still say, ‘We are your best partner to get the word out
to consumers.'"

As part of the deal, Engauge will become part of Publicis’ U.S.-based ZenithOptimedia Group and
will fall under Atlanta-based Moxie, the group’s digital-advertising agency. Taken together,
Engauge and Moxie will have more than 600 employees in Columbus, Atlanta, New York, Pittsburgh,
Orlando and Los Angeles.

Both Engauge and Moxie will retain their names, Engauge CEO Nick Bandy said in an email.

While he said that the company has “no intention to make any changes to the employee base” in
Columbus, at least one executive will depart with the acquisition. Longtime advertising executive
Rick Milenthal, 54, will step down as executive chairman of Engauge.

“This is a gratifying culmination of a 30-year career with this agency and its predecessors, Ten
United, HMS Partners and Hameroff, Milenthal, Spence,” Milenthal said. “This acquisition is
validation of the great leadership position our company has attained in this fast-changing
digital-marketing world.”

Launched in 2007, Engauge was formed through the union of Columbus-based ad agency Ten United;
Spunlogic, a digital-marketing-services company in Atlanta; and Direct Impact, a database-analytics
and customer-relations management company in Austin, Texas.